Harvard’s $699 HBS Foundry Uses AI Avatars to Rehearse Startup Pitches

HBS Foundry is an eight-week, $699 online entrepreneurship bootcamp built to take participants from refining a startup idea to pitching investors and customers. The program combines Harvard Business School material, a peer community, AI tools, and weekly live sessions with founders, investors, and HBS faculty. HBS said it had tested the product with more than 100 universities across all 50 states. 2

Its most distinctive feature is a set of AI video avatars modeled on participating instructors. Created with HeyGen, the avatars let founders rehearse high-pressure business conversations before having them with real people.

How HBS Foundry’s AI avatars work

Participants can practice investor pitches, sales calls, and board meetings against AI representations of instructors. The system is intended to provide guided feedback and “low-stakes reps”—repeated practice that can help founders prepare for a consequential conversation with an actual investor, customer, or board member. 2

Instructor volunteers include Jeff Bussgang, a Flybridge Capital co-founder and HBS senior lecturer. His AI likeness acts as a simulated counterpart in the online workspace, allowing participants to practice not only what they say but also how they respond in a meeting-like exchange. 2

The avatars supplement the program’s live teaching rather than replace it. Experienced founders, investors, and HBS faculty continue to lead weekly live sessions, while the AI layer makes additional practice available between those meetings. 2

The “Uber for bananas” test

New York Times reporter Sarah Kessler tested the experience by adopting the persona of an overly optimistic entrepreneur and pitching an “Uber for bananas”—a proposal for faster banana delivery—to an AI-generated version of Bussgang. 1

The simulation exposed the technology’s limitations. The avatar remained polite but appeared to hold an unusually fixed smile. Static shirt shadows and repetitive shoulder movement made the digital representation look visibly artificial. 1

The pitch itself did not fare better with the real person. When Kessler later spoke with Bussgang in person, he was also not persuaded by the banana-delivery idea. The experiment therefore illustrated two separate points: the avatar could provide a setting for practice, but it was not yet indistinguishable from a human instructor—and a simulated pitch still needs a credible business idea. 12

Why use video avatars instead of chatbots?

The program’s earlier AI concept focused more closely on text-based chatbots or agents representing instructors. Foundry’s video-avatar approach adds a social and visual layer: participants can rehearse the rhythm of a pitch, the experience of addressing a recognizable counterpart, and the pressure of a simulated meeting. 2

That distinction matters for entrepreneurship training. A text chatbot can help someone explore an idea or formulate answers, but a video simulation is aimed at practicing presentation and interaction. The available reporting supports that functional difference, but it does not provide a controlled, side-by-side study showing that participants perform better with video avatars than with chatbots. 2

How people reacted to the avatars

Foundry’s managing director Elise Bates described the avatars as a way to give early-stage founders access to practice opportunities they might not receive before meeting a real investor.

Participants reportedly responded positively to the experience. Bussgang said students “love” the avatars, even as he acknowledged that his own digital version was somewhat “creepy.” 2

That mixed reaction captures the program’s central trade-off. The avatars may make repeated practice easier to access and more socially realistic than a conventional text interface, but their artificial expressions and movements can also distract from the exercise. For now, HBS Foundry is presenting them as a scalable rehearsal tool that works alongside human instruction—not a digital substitute for it.